im very impressed. im just curious why they dont shave that much off to begin with, im sure its considerably lighter... i guess for safety reasons they need to leave it within certain tolerances.

i approve

It's purely a cost issue, not safety. The gun is perfectly safe. The cost of all the set ups and 3D milling would add significantly to the retail price of the gun.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vegard

Nice, now go do that to some production markers. I still remember your Facebook post a year or two ago where you said you were bringing PL milling back..

And at that time I had two different versions of the Vanguard Creed in my bag that I designed up and prototyped when KEE was considering distributing them. Unfortunately that deal fell through. I've done a few others since too on other platforms but not sure how many will make the light of day. We shall see!

did you reverse engineer the original CAD model or were you able to get it from empire? Would you be willing to share the original? I work at a prototyping shop, use SW everyday and would love to dabble in this game.

I have always wanted to make more versions of any gun I design. You can see that from the many variants I made of the Intimidator and ICD guns I have done in the past. It's not my decision anymore though. It's now down to marketing and sales.

blklight, You are absolutely correct that if I were to have these made at the original manufacturing facility that I wouldn't have to pay for many extra set ups. I would just need new set ups for the bolt guide milling and the foregrip because it would have to be held differently than we do currently.

It's not the cost of paying for the programming of the 3D milling that makes the difference. It's the cost of the time it takes the machine tool to run the programs.

The current body and most of the parts are made with either 2.5D machining or profile 3D machining where a lot of the shape is cut with a single pass of the cutting tool. You can see this in the profile of the gun body being a constant radius, and in the "swooshes" that are concave being the tip of a ball cutter. This is a very low cost way to machine shape into something, and one of the reasons we can sell the Axe at such a competitive price point.

The body and reg etc. that you see on my gun were machined with 3D surface machining with a smaller tool that steps over 0.01" at a time covering the whole surface to give it it's shape. It takes more than ten times (actually way more) to make the body you see above than it does to make the stock body.

It's the machine time that cost the extra money and that would make the stock gun more expensive.

I am not sure that the Axe is a "heavy" gun by any means, I do wonder if people would pay several hundred dollars more to make it lighter like mine. Would you?

Also if I were to make private label milled guns I would want most likely be doing that in the USA, not as the over seas factory, as it's tough and takes a long time and a lot of work to get them up to speed to make a short run of guns. If I were to make them in the USA, as I would really like to do so, I would have to come up with new tooling and fixturing. I made my gun simply by the use of a vice and 4th axis bed. In production I would need to come up with better ways to do it so that it didn't take any longer than necessary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrglass6919

I envy your job! I'd like to talk more, seeing your not accepting PM's, is there a better way to contact you?

It's the machine time that cost the extra money and that would make the stock gun more expensive.

I am not sure that the Axe is a "heavy" gun by any means, I do wonder if people would pay several hundred dollars more to make it lighter like mine. Would you?

Ok, that makes sense. But, yes, I do think people would pay more for a better milled version. People have been asking for a retail boxed Axe "Pro" sold by Empire for awhile now. I'm guessing the cost to manufacture vs small buying audience prevents this from happening. The relatively low cost of the Axe is one of it's biggest selling features.